Reliving the American Revolution: USA250 Anniversary Program Part 1

Film & Lecture 1: Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 6:30 to 8:00pm; the Salt Lake City Public Library’s Nancy Tessman Auditorium, 210 East 400 South, Salt Lake City, UT. The Salt Lake Public Library parking below the library is free with validation. The life of Jewish-American financier Haym Solomon can help us understand the fraught position of religious minorities during the American Revolution as well as the complex mechanisms by which the revolt against British rule was funded. Solomon’s relationship to the Sons of Liberty also offers an entry point into the experience of popular revolution - an experience that often-involved exhilaration and liberation as well as coercion and terror. Historian Christopher Hodson is associate professor in the Department of History at Brigham Young University. A native of Logan, Utah, he holds BA and MA degrees from Utah State University and a PhD from Northwestern University. A specialist in early American and early modern French history, he is the author of numerous scholarly articles, op-eds, and two books, The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History, and, with Brett Rushforth, Beyond the Ocean: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions, both published by Oxford University Press. The Salt Lake Public Library parking below the library is free with validation. General Description: This 2026 series has been built around Warner Bros. Studios 1936 to 1940 patriotic film series Old Glory--which has recently been restored to its original, vibrant Technicolor--as a springboard for understanding the most recent scholarship concerning the history of the American War of Independence (1775-1783). Each free, evening program, will include four parts: a 15 to 20-minute screening of an American Revolution-related short-reel film, film historian Dr. James V. D’Arc’s introductory remarks, a contemporary American historian's response to each film, and a Q&A session that will engage both scholars and participants.